Daily Times

Afghanistan is in headlines. An Afghan peace is said to be in the pipeline. The US appears willing to withdraw from Afghanistan. The process has been under way for more than half a year. So far, the process has yielded no tangible results. It is hoped that peace will soon return to Afghanistan. But if various factors at play are seen in a broad view, it seems that an Afghan peace is a distant dream. Despite the negotiations between the US and Afghan Taliban for more than eight months, no agreement has been reached between the two sides.

The peace process is totally flawed. It is not an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process. The National Unity Government, which is in power in Kabul, is not included in the dialogue process because the Taliban consider it a puppet government installed by the US. Also, the Taliban and the Unity Government do not represent all Afghan people, other political factions too have key stakes but have been largely absent from the ongoing dialogue. It is thus not an inclusive process representing the interests of all domestic actors.

The Taliban want a complete withdrawal of US and allied forces from Afghanistan. The US wants to retain military bases so that it can continue surveillance and counter-terrorism activities from Afghanistan. The incumbent government in Afghanistan also favours a US presence in the country. The US provides 65 per cent of resources in the annual budget of Afghanistan. Up to 95 per cent of the financial needs of the Afghan Army are met by the US. Afghan Army is perhaps the only army in the world with a desertion rate of more than 27 per cent. In other words, 27 out of 100 soldiers in the Afghan Army leave service before reaching the age of retirement.

If the US somehow withdraws from Afghanistan, how will the government meet its expenditures? Who will finance the Afghan Army? If the US withdraws, its allies too will leave Afghanistan. All NGOs and INGOs will wind down their operations. The US faces an economic crisis at home. It has lost more than $7 trillion in the war against terror. The US public appears to be weary of American presence elsewhere in the world. The costly wars are draining American economy. If the US leaves Afghanistan, it is fair to expect that any government in Afghanistan will face a dire economic situation. The current government might flounder once the US exits from the country.

Peace is not imminent in Afghanistan on account of the country’s buffer zone nature. Geography is destiny. One cannot change it

Afghanistan’s army is corrupt, inefficient and poorly trained. If the US withdraws, the Afghan Army would be incapable of preventing the situation from going from bad to worse.

Afghanistan has been at war for more than a century. The country has seen wars throughout much of its history. It has had to fight Britain. Then, there was a revolution. The Soviets invaded the country. A brutal civil war followed the Soviet withdrawal. In 1996, the Taliban assumed power and unleashed a ruthless regime upon the people of Afghanistan. After 9/11, the US invaded the country. Nothing has changed since then. Today, Afghanistan is a war-torn country. The legacy of more than 100 years of wars cannot be undone by a flawed six-month peace process.

Afghanistan has been a buffer state for centuries. Great Britain used it as a buffer zone to prevent Russia from encroaching upon the British empire. Today, the US is in Afghanistan to pursue its containment of China. History shows that buffer states always see a lot of turbulence. Poland has historically been a buffer between Russia and Germany. It has witnessed wars and instability for three centuries. It was only after the end of the German Question in 1945 that peace returned to the country. Kurdistan, which apparently is no more than a geographical expression, today, is also a buffer region. Everybody knows wht Kurds are going through. They are the largest stateless community in the world. Great powers use buffer states against one another. Peace is not imminent in Afghanistan on account of the country’s buffer zone nature. Geography is a big part of destiny. One cannot change it.

Afghanistan is home to various ethnicities and borders on countries having those ethnicities. To its north are Uzbeks, Tajiks and other people of Central Asian origin. In southern areas of the country, Pashtuns live in a region bordering Pakistan. It has a large Persian speaking population in areas bordering Iran. In central Afganistan, tribalism dominates the landscape. Afghan nationalism, strong in the past, has become subordinate to tribal nationalism. People are showing more loyalty to their tribe than the country. Wars have torn the fabric of the Afghan society. The country is now divided along ethnic, lingual, tribal, and religious lines. Can there be peace in a country where people do not wholeheartedly support the state and have no strong civic nationalism?

After 1945, the US has launched eighteen wars only in Latin America. It has waged a war against Vietnam. It has invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and intervened in Syria. Has the US won a war since 1945? The US has been a global hegemon for more than seven decades. It favours an international status quo. It will try to eliminate or prevent the emergence of any regional power that can challenge the US hegemony.

The truth is that the US is not interested in winning or losing wars. It is only interested in perpetuating and prolonging instability through wars. It will not make much difference to the US whether it wins any of the wars or not. What matters is a challenge to US power. Seen through this prism, the US will not leave Afghanistan. It will want to perpetuate the instability and see to it that no challenger to US power emerges.

China is emerging fast. The US is wary of China’s rapid rise. It will not completely withdraw from Afghanistan, therefore, there will remain disagreements between the Taliban and the US. Hence, peace will be at a long distance away.

Even if the US withdraws, peace will not follow immediately. Restoring peace will take a long time. An absence of war is not peace.

The writer is a freelancer